Reading + Meditation = Readitation

The ability to stay grounded and centered is a huge asset on your M.A.P. Making journey. You feel more focused. You waste less energy feeling stressed. You have more clarity. And if you're looking for a way to get grounded and centered, meditation can't be beat.

One of my favorite meditation resources is Meditation Made Easy by Lorin Roche, Ph.D.  It's easily the most accessible meditation book I've come across, and one many of my clients end up buying. It's also the book that played a key role in my discovering meditation to begin with.

Early in the book, Roche talks about an idea he calls meditative reading (I call it "readitation").

What's a meditative style of reading? It's really simple - just pause at the end of each paragraph or each page and take a couple of conscious breaths. (This pause is actually a mini-meditation, and all you have to do is breathe.)...Enjoy the experience of air flowing in and out as you process the information you've just covered. This will help you translate the information in the book into an internal ability.

Later, he describes part of what happens when you do this.

When you take a few conscious breaths after reading something, you shift your sensory focus from words to feeling your body. When you do this, your body gets to assimilate the learning.

It's a simple idea, but there are so many things I love about it. First, it's a really, really easy way to start dipping your toe into meditation. It's about as easy and non-onerous as you're going to get.

Second, so many of us have a tendency to treat reading (and many other things we do) as a race to the finish. Jump in. Get it done. Move on. The result can be a bit like rain falling on bone-dry soil - the ideas we read just run right off, without a chance to soak in. A meditational approach to reading gives you a chance to really stop and ask, what am I reading here? What am I learning?

Third, it gets you out of your head and more fully into the whole of you (something most of us desperately need).

And finally, it's a way to simply slow down and focus your awareness.

Why not give it a try? Pick a favorite book and try some readitation. Maybe just a couple minutes at first, enough time to play with it, but not so much that it feels like a chore. As you get more comfortable , you can expand the time you spend with it.

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Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM